I’ll be honest. I pulled this one off the shelf looking for something to pan. I’ve been so positive in my reviews lately and thought that an early nineties prestige (with four page spread fold out cover) starring Ghost Rider, Wolverine, and Punisher would be pretty terrible.

Hearts Of Darkness! C’mon!

But damnit, I kind of liked it.

The story was silly, but also self aware in some interesting ways. I haven’t read much by Howard Mackie, though, so I didn’t know what to expect. John Romita Jr., though, is a legend.

One of the things that threw me is that there was absolutely no indication of who was working on this book on the outside or in the front, and I finally found it on the last page after reading the whole thing. (I did notice JRJR’s signature on the front later.)

This book is so short and I don’t think the plot is going to be a factor in a purchasing decision for most people, so I’m not going to worry about spoilers.

Blackheart, a weird oily porcupine type dude, is summoned on some hilltop (and of course immediately kills all the worshipers.) He’s the Son of Mephisto (Marvel’s Satan) and he hates his dad.

While ranting to himself, he decides he can show that he’s better than his father by corrupting some people. Don’t worry about the logic.

He’s smarter than his dad (he thinks) so he’s going to go for those new heroes – the ones that operate in a gray area. Their willingness to kill and walk “the edge” will make them easier to corrupt.

Hence he gets Wolverine, Ghost Rider and The Punisher to come to this small town and tries to convince them to help him kill Mephisto. They say no, he kidnaps a little innocent girl, they fight, yada yada yada.

It’s pretty predictable. They’re tempted by visions of what they truly desire. They all say no.

The dialogue is often terrible, with boring, longwinded, and sometimes confusing speeches by the villain, along with weird statements from our heroes (Punisher is especially bad, acting like he thinks Blackheart is a hologram and spewing lines like “Until phonies like you shut up!” that just don’t seem particularly dark or edgy.)

Plus the bad guy seems to have some pretty awesome powers and somehow gets put down by a hail of bullets? Budda Budda Poom Poom!

But while the book had me rolling my eyes at times, I still thought the characterization was right and enjoyed the premise. It’s a bit metafictional, letting the “darker” heroes themselves talk about the “gritty” era of marvel comics. I enjoyed that aspect.

Part of me can’t help it. I grew up with these guys. I was the target demographic for all this craziness. This book does a nice job of bringing me back to that era, without being as bad as the worst of it.

As far as continuity goes, Hearts of Darkness leans the heaviest on Ghost Rider, who is really the main character. It’s Dan Ketch on the bike here and he seems relatively new at it. But while it seems there are a couple of important moments here for him (self discovery, interaction with Mephisto), the story doesn’t rely much on previous knowledge.

Likewise, I don’t know much about Blackheart, it doesn’t seem necessary. He’d only been around a couple of years at this point and introduces himself pretty well.

Wolverine and Punisher just do their thing – doesn’t matter where this fits in continuity for those two.

What really brought this book up a notch was the art. Instant flashbacks. Childlike joy.

Nice, I’ve always been morbidly curious about these team-up OGNs. Hopefully one day Marvel will round them up in a Marvel Premiere Classic hardcover, if not in some more deluxe format.

For Ghost Rider, the logical thing to read before and/or after this OGN would be the two Ghost Rider: Danny Ketch Classic trades. I haven’t read them myself, but I’m impressed at how quickly Marvel followed up the first trade with the second, and hopefully we’ll see a third solicited soon.

There’s some other Romita Jr. Punisher from around this time that might be worth checking out as well (namely Punisher: War Zone), though I haven’t read that either so I can’t comment on the quality of the writing. There’s also Punisher War Journal Classic (only one trade so far), collecting the early-’90s Carl Potts/Jim Lee run. I have that book and it’s enjoyable for what it is. It can be found for pretty cheap too (I got my copy new for around $8).

I’ve heard of the Ketch classic trades and actually have a saved search for Punisher: War Zone, because I’ve heard it’s good. It’s often pretty expensive though and I’d like to find it for under 10 dollars.

I’ll add in the links to this post when I get a second. It’s good to have someone who knows their marvel around.

Totally unrelated, but I just got the first Agents of Atlas and The Pulse trades in the mail. Mainly because they were 2 bucks each in a stack of other books, but do you think I can dive right in to those? Or should read something else first?

Agents of Atlas: You should be fine diving right in. It focuses on characters who hadn’t been seen much since the 1950s. It also has a bunch of reprints of older appearance in the back, which is cool, though I can’t remember what all there is.

The Pulse: You’ll get a lot more out of it if you read Alias first (either the Omnibus or the two Ultimate Collections). The Pulse is basically just a non-mature readers continuation of Alias, but with a new name. The second trade also ties into Secret War, which you’ll want to read first. All of that said, you would probably be okay if you read the first Pulse trade with no background if you want to wait on getting Alias (I’m not sure whether the Ultimate Collections are in print — I have the Omnibus, personally, but it’s most definitely OOP and routinely sells for hundreds of dollars these days). But yeah, the first Pulse trade is actually one of my favorite modern superhero stories…as in, it would most likely get a perfect score from me if I ever decide to review it. As much as it’s an Alias story, it’s also probably the best non-JMS Spider-Man story to have been published in the first half of the 2000s.

Also, if you do get your hands on Punisher: War Zone, could you let me know what the indicia says? There are varying reports of it being simply “Punisher: War Zone” and “Punisher: War Zone Vol. 1.” The latter obviously would indicate that Marvel had some intention of collecting more of the series, although the trade came out in 2002, so I doubt it’ll happen without a reissue of the first volume and probably a rebranding of the line (Punisher: War Zone Classic, most likely).

actually, it looks like it’s the second Atlas trade, and with Alias coming first I’ll have some hunting to do before I can get to these.

I do want to get Alias, since it’s look interesting to me for a long time, so I guess I’ll wait on that. It’s ok, I’ve got a lot of books to read and can be patient! Glad to hear Pulse is good though, it looked intriguing.

Ughhhh there’s a lot for all five Amazing Spider-Man by JMS ultimate collections right now for 95 bucks and it’s soooooo hard to resist. I haven’t gotten into spiderman for such a long time. I kind of miss the bastard.

Don’t know if I’ll see War Zone for a while (also dangerous for me to start having Punisher trades) but I’ll let you know if I grab it.

That’s great, best of luck on the second volume! Alias is an absolutely wonderful series. Bendis was writing Daredevil at the same time, and there’s a point when Jessica Jones is acting as Matt Murdock’s bodyguard in DD, and the two start showing up in each other’s series a bit. But I hadn’t read DD when I read Alias and had no trouble, so you’ll be fine even if you haven’t read the Bendis/Maleev stuff.

cool, thanks. I also was reminded that a title from my childhood was Marvel Comics Presents (the ones that flipped over) and I impulsively ordered all four MCP Wolverine trades in the hopes of finally finding out what happens in those books. I had like 10 issues from random places in the series and never got any endings.

Well in that case, get ready for more Danny Ketch Ghost Rider! He shows up in one of the MCP trades (Vol. 2 or 3, I think).

And yeah, I had quite a few issues from that series as well. I think I got most of them for pretty cheap; I don’t think it was a huge seller after the early days. It’s only sparingly collected today, with the Wolverine stories obviously getting the most attention.

It was most likely Ketch then. Throughout the ’90s and up until the early 2000s, the original Ghost Rider (that is to say, the 1970s version) simply went by his given name, Johnny Blaze. He still had some sort of powers, I think, along with a gun that shot hellfire blasts, but his head wasn’t on fire. :)

When I was a kid I didn’t really get there could be multiple versions of a hero. Ghost Rider was just Ghost Rider to me.

So the books that I had, which usually didn’t state his alter ego’s name, since he was battling in hell or something, were just Ghost Rider Books.

The only one I had that dealt with his other life at all was an older one, maybe early 80s or late 70s, which called him Johnny Blaze. So I always thought that was who he was. Only in the last couple years did I learn there was more than one Ghost Rider (corollary to this is that I always knew there was that white outfitted western one, which is one of my most vivid comic memories from my childhood. Just him riding alongside a train and hopping up.)

I was the same way about not grasping that there could be more than one version of a given character. That’s probably why it blew my mind when, in the very first Spider-Man comic I ever purchased for myself, Peter Parker quit being Spider-Man and Ben Reilly took up the mantle!

And if mediocrity is what you’re looking for, just keep reading the Wolverine Legends trades…it becomes painfully average, even boring, by the third trade.

I’m actually considering some books that look out and out horrible at the moment (including the Witchblade and The Darkness Compendiums), just because I’m bizarrely fascinated with crappy ’90s comics. They’re so bad that I think I derive just as much enjoyment out of them as the people who thought they were legitimately good back in the day.

I really think they do. I saw a 12-year-old kid post this on a fellow blogger’s site the other day (actual quote): “When did they stop using those weird color dots in comics and switch over to full color filled?”

Actually, hair follicles get oxygen from the blood stream, rather than from the air (much like how a plant gets water from its roots and not its leaves).

A quick search of the message board archives can pull up information on the specific brands and items that concern you. These biological ingredients help remove accumulation of product and offer a delicately fresh scent.

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[...] other Marvel releases of the time.Unlike the book featured in our previous Marvel prestige review, Ghost Rider / Wolverine / Punisher: Hearts of Darkness, this release isn’t accompanied by any such gimmicks as a four page fold out cover spread, nor [...]